Abstract
The consequences of the war were also felt by the Chinese seamen in Liverpool, many of whom (including some who had partners and children in the city) were repatriated to East Asia when the Pacific war with Japan was concluded. This expedient act of government stereotyped the Chinese in Liverpool, a group that had been characterised as a model community in the 1930s, as ‘undesirable aliens’ and, like the ‘brown babies’ of the Second World War, created a generation of children who have been searching for their fathers and mothers into the twenty-first century.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout the half century, the Chinese were classed as ‘aliens’ (a term widely used to describe migrants who were not from Britain’s colonies) and obliged to register, so that their whereabouts were known at any one time.
- 2.
This unfavourable discourse re-emerged after the Second World War, when the size of the Chinese community again generated racism. In a Home Office Report of 1946–1947, the Chinese seamen of Liverpool were characterised as ‘undesirable aliens’ on the grounds that they were involved with opium and crime.
- 3.
An important exception is Wong (1989). Ms Wong consulted the Home Office file HO 213/926.
- 4.
The file (HO 213/926, accessed at the National Archives, Kew) on the ‘Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen’ was opened by the Home Office’s Aliens Department in October 1945 and closed in October 1946. All quotes and references are to documents in this file unless otherwise stated. As well as ‘undesirable’, these seamen were also described as ‘unwanted’ and ‘surplus’ in the official file.
- 5.
Chinese seamen were landed on condition of returning to sea at the end of a month.
- 6.
The seamen were divided up for shipment to the appropriate ports at which they had originally engaged.
- 7.
www.halfandhalf.org.uk/. This website contains a set of photographs of intermarried couples and their children.
References
Aspinall, P.J., and C. Caballero. 2013. ‘Broken Blossoms’, ‘Undesirable Elements’ … or ‘Ordinary Families’? Social Attitudes Towards Lived Experiences of Anglo-Chinese Mixing in Britain, 1900–1950. The Asian American Literary Review 4 (2): 53–67.
Ng, K. 1968. The Chinese in London. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations.
Wong, M.L. 1989. Chinese Liverpudlians. The History and Society of Merseyside Series. Birkenhead: Liver Press.
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Caballero, C., Aspinall, P.J. (2018). ‘Undesirable Element’: The Repatriation of Chinese Sailors and Break Up of Mixed Families in the 1940s. In: Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_7
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